Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Via the Harry Walker Agency (HWA), I now have speaking representation! While I can always be approached independently via email - Trogan@McLaughlin.com or Thomas.RoganE@Gmail.com - prospective parties are now also able to book me via HWA. That page also offers links to previous speeches/possible speeches.

Last week, Donald Trump sent
out a tweet: “Nobody should be allowed to burn
the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of
citizenship or year in jail!”

Like so many of the President-Elect’s
tweets, this one was simple but clever. Trump says there must be “consequences”,
but then hedges by suggesting that “perhaps” flag-burners should lose their
citizenship or face imprisonment. Doing so, Trump cultivates righteous anger under
the pretense of his subliminal flexibility. By saying “perhaps”, Trump induces
the support of those who might support lesser consequences than prison.

Yet Republicans should not
sit idle in face of this tweet. Trump is not just a man, he is the soon-to-be
leader of the free world. As Charles Cooke notes, Trump’s tweet is not a peripheral concern: it has the potential
to become law. And if that were to happen, it would cut at the most sacred of
conservative values.

The first value under
threat is individual freedom. At its most basic level, conservative ideology is
concerned with allowing individuals setting their own destiny. While conservatives
must be more attentive to the
diversity of human freedom, freedom from intrusive
government is our supreme value. But by restricting flag burning, we would
restrict the most crucial of freedoms: the freedom to speak on matters of
political or public concern. That freedom matters not solely for the natural
right it embodies, but in its verification of America. Where others, such as
Daesh (or ISIL/ISIS/the Islamic State) wave their flags in service of bloody
tyranny, we wave Old Glory in service of peaceful
unity. That unity is why hundreds of millions of oppressed citizens have
welcomed our arrival as liberators.

Nevertheless, our unity in
freedom is not simply maintained.

Sourced in the 13th
century Magna Carta, the 18th century enlightenment, and the moral
courage of our founders, the American experiment remains a work in progress. Rightly,
it will always be so. But just as our united freedom requires defense by our
military, it requires sustainment by our united discourse. Namely, our ability
to disagree with one another in service of both consensus and obstruction. That
ability makes America exceptional. Even in the liberal democracies of Europe,
governments do not trust their citizens with truly free debate. Instead, they
impose restrictions on the content of political speech. In consequence, they
chill the open articulation of controversial ideas.

These restrictions lead to
a very dark place. Protecting hate from the cooling influence of the public
square, anti-free speech laws foster resentment in the shadows. That resentment
fuels the recruitment of extremist
groups that make the Alt-Right look like Bernie
Sanders supporters.

Yet there’s another threat
here. Because Trump’s tweet also represents a problematic appropriation of Old
Glory by the executive. While Trump might bear the pretense of acting in good
faith, his tweet carries the power of his looming office. While the vast
majority of us find the idea of flag burning repellant (personally, I regard
the act as a despicable insult to those who have risked
everything for America), Trump’s beliefs now carry great
power. That matters because when it comes to free speech, the Constitution, not
the President, must be America’s arbiter.

The founders established the Judicial
branch for a reason: to ensure that the personal interests of one President or
one Congress cannot easily dissolve the legal rights of the people. Free speech
is the most important of all our rights. And writing the majority opinion in
the 2011 case of Snyder vs. Phelps, Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Roberts
explained why the Constitution protects hurtful – and even hateful - speech.

“Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action,
move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great
pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the
speaker. As a nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful
speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

Ultimately,
that’s the key. Controversial, uncomfortable speech matters as much if not more
than comfortable speech. Freedom is too important to be left to the whims of
one leader. Its defense is incumbent upon all of us because all of us suffer in
its absence. That is the lesson of history and of culture (read Orwell’s 1984…).
And just as conservatives must challenge Trump, liberals must also look in the
mirror. As I argued recently, when elite colleges like
UVA face unions of anti-free speech students and faculty, we should all be
concerned.